Ghent University Suspends Nathan Cofnas After His Campaign Against Jason Arday
Nathan Cofnas says Ghent University has suspended him and that he expects rector Petra De Sutter to dismiss him next. The dispute centres on Cofnas’s July 2026 Substack post accusing Cambridge sociologist Jason Arday of extensive plagiarism in his thesis. Arday later resigned from Cambridge and subsequently died. Ghent University has said it is taking Cofnas’s public conduct surrounding the Arday case seriously and has indicated that “appropriate action” would follow.
But Cofnas’s position at Ghent was already controversial before the Arday allegations. The philosopher of biology, known for his work on racial differences in intelligence, had faced petitions from faculty members and campaigns from students since his appointment, with critics arguing that his views conflicted with the university’s ethics standards.
His suspension now raises a wider question over whether Ghent is responding specifically to his conduct in the Arday case or bringing an already long-running dispute over his academic views to a head.
I was just suspended by Ghent University. They will almost certainly fire me.
— Nathan Cofnas (@nathancofnas) August 20, 2026
The decision was made by rector Petra De Sutter, a former leader of the Green Party.
There is an uncomfortable irony here. Nathan Cofnas helped drive scrutiny of Jason Arday’s academic record, yet members of Ghent University’s own Philosophy and Moral Sciences department had already raised questions about whether Cofnas’s academic background was the right fit for the postdoctoral position and about how his appointment was handled.
The department produced a detailed position paper examining his qualifications, the selection process and the impact of his appointment. That does not automatically mean Cofnas lacked academic credentials altogether, but it does mean his own appointment was subject to serious internal criticism.
The question is whether the British press will now examine those concerns with anything approaching the intensity it directed at Arday.
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The Campaign Against Arday Went Beyond Academia
This, I believe, is the root of the Jason Arday ordeal. Nathan Cofnas did not believe Arday belonged at Cambridge or deserved his position.
Cofnas’s arguments also sit within a wider climate in which prominent commentators have questioned Black achievement in strikingly racialised terms. Amanda Platell wrote in the Daily Mail that, in a “normal world,” Arday would have remained a PE teacher, while historian David Starkey has his own documented history of racist remarks, including his notorious 2020 comments about slavery and “so many damn blacks.”
Cofnas’ entire campaign seemed to rest on the assumption that Black people are not intellectually suited for high‑profile roles. That is not a philosophical position; it is abhorrent and dangerous racism.
#JasonArday